Episode 04 - Game On

I had the unique opportunity to watch episode 4 of Survivor Guatemala in Salt Lake City at a party held in honor of Rafe. He spent quite a bit of time answering questions from the audience on Survivor trivia and strategy. I have a much better understanding of some of those things that you always wondered about Survivor - such as "can you kill the monkeys?"

OK: episode 04 made the game very interesting - especially for the alliance of Rafe, Stephanie, Gary and Amy (which alliance, by the way, was in fact confirmed by Rafe - you read it here first people!)

Sitting pretty
Rafe is in a wonderful situation right now. He and Stephanie are now rock solid with the loss of Amy and Gary. Now that they've flipped Judd, they can easily pick off the remaining women if needed (but PLEASE don't vote for Cindy - not yet!) I'm sure that Stephanie and Rafe have strengthened their ties with Jamie and Lydia, although they were not members of the original alliance. What Stephanie needs to do now is make a phony alliance with Jamie and tell him that she's really not that tight with Rafe and Lydia. Then they need to go in with Judd and make him think that he's not the odd man out in this new tribe. Essentially, that makes it very easy for Rafe and Stephanie to get to the merge and hopefully (but not likely) hook up with Gary and Amy again and ride their original alliance all the way to the end!

Game theorizing
Possibility #1: If Nakum looses another immunity challenge, they will vote off Margaret first, then Cindy. I don't think Stephanie likes Cindy - she's too tough a player.

#2: If Yaxha looses the immunity, Amy is easily the first to go, followed by the ultra-annoying Brian and then Gary. This means that Gary has a decent chance to make it to the merge since they probably won't lose that many challenges.

#3: We really don't know much about the alliances on the new Yaxha tribe - other than Blake & Bobby John. Brandon and Dannie seem to be undecideds at this point.

Final thoughts:
I can see a clear path for Rafe to get to the final four - but it's way too early in the game to make this prediction. If they don't mix up the tribes again, it's a sure thing that he'll at least make it to the jury. The new Nakum tribe may end up loosing a couple more immunity challenges, but to the degree that they can vote out the old Nakum members (Margaret, Cindy & Judd) it only makes it more likely that they will meet up with the old Yaxha members (Gary, Amy & brian) for the merge. It's almost a no-loose situation. They can either win or loose challenges and still come out looking decent.

The game is on.

Rafe's current odds for the win - 40%